


Black as my Soul

by frubeto



Series: Renoventures [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, au where disco has a counselor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 00:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frubeto/pseuds/frubeto
Summary: Jett has a bad day. There's also a party.
Relationships: Hugh Culber & Jett Reno, Jett Reno & Sylvia Tilly, Jett Reno/Jett Reno's Wife
Series: Renoventures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095290
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	Black as my Soul

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this when i was angry. also i lost my reno voice and my culber voice. so enjoy.
> 
> this is technically set in the same 'au' as my reunion fic. 
> 
> considering starting a series called 'reno is not okay'

“Is this seat taken?”

Jett looked up fromwhere she was contemplating the perfectly identical potato fries the replicator had assembled for her to see Doctor Culber hovering next to her table. Mouth full, she only waved non-committally at him, even if secretly she was glad about the company. Maybe it would distract her from her wallowing in self-pity, the noise around her, the sounds of bottles clanking and drunk laughter attacking her ears, or the stench of alcohol and sweat engulfing her, in a few hours to be accompanied by vomit if they kept this up. Denise would have hated it. And she was starting to as well. At least under the pretense of hunger most people would leave her alone. Most.

Culber sat, putting his cocktail glass down in front of him and – really? If she were in any better a mood, she might have had a witty comment about his choice of drink.

“Is everything alright?” he asked next, and she busied herself slowly stirring her own drink with her straw.

“Sure. Why.”

“You’re sitting alone at a party with nothing but fries and the most repulsive drink the replicator has to offer.”

Ah.

She took a deliberate sip of it before answering, just to annoy him. It was pitch black, shimmery, and had a unique squid-ink-like consistency to it that kept most people from appreciating the taste.

“I like it.”

A visible shudder went through Culber, and she huffed.

“My wife introduced me to it, actually. Said my taste was so bad she just brought the worst-wounding drink she could find.”

She shrugged in an ‘an here we are’ gesture, and he laughed softly.

“How long were you married?”

“Nine years. Would have been the big ten this week.”

There was no denying that that was part of the reason her mood had been absymal recently. And he nodded, understanding, and then pointed back at her glass.

“Maybe you should switch to something a bit less… glum, then,“ he said, with a motion to his own colorful concoction. She frowned.

“With the amount of alcohol in that? Is that your professional opinion, Doctor Culber?”

He laughed.

“I’m off duty. And with the amount of sugar in it, you don’t even notice.”

“It’s not a good idea,” she sighed when it became clear that he wasn’t letting up, and with the sudden realization that she wasn’t disinterested in drinking but actively keeping from it, his whole demeanor changed from joking to converned, his face scrunching up in that sympathetic doctor way that let her guess his next words before he even formed them. It stayed silent for another moment though, and she popped a fry in ther mouth. Then they did come.

“You know you can always talk to Doctor Sola if you-”

She was about to wave him off when he stopped himself, having spotted Stamets approaching, and let him greet him and sit. Always mindful of confidentiality and her privacy. So much for off duty. It was considerate, sure, but really Stamets was sitting in a glass house. Hell, they’ve  met in front of her office. 

“Does he ever stop doctoring?”

“No,” Stamets didn’t hesistate to answer, without having been present for any context of the question, and it almost made her laugh as she turned back to Culber.

“I’ve had a standing appointment ever since you guys picked me up off that rock,” she told him with a dismissive shake of her head. “I’m fine. I just know when not to trust myself.”

Not that this was a recurring problem, but there had been incidents she didn’t need a repeat of. She probably shouldn’t even be here. Tilly had insisted, though, and who could deny her anything. Besides, they were all adults, however much some of the fast-tracked cadets made one question it. Speaking of.

“Jett!” Tilly called from a few steps too many away, seeming almost surprised to actually see her, and definitely already on her way to tispy, if not past. She and Burnham probably had had their own little pre-party in their quarters since Burnham had managed to get out of attending. Whatever. It’s not as if she hadn’t earned it.

“You’re here.”

“Yeah,” Jett said, awkwardly returning the sideways half hug Tilly had wrapped her into.

“That’s good. I wan’t sure you would be. Hi Commander,” she greeted Stamets, and nodded to Culber.

“Imma go get a drink, d’you guys want anything?”

Stamets took her up on that and gave her an order of what souded equally sweet as Culber’s drink, Culber pointed to said drink still being half full, and Jett promtly emptied her glass to hold out to her.

“You can get me another one of these.”

“Ew! Are you actually drinking that?” Tilly shrieked, but took the glass anyway, eyeing the shiny residue in it warily.

“I thought that was only invented to be the bad option in a drinking game. Are you sure I can’t get you something a little less-”

She stopped, visibly struggling to decide whether or not she should finish that sentence with something like ‘disgusting’, or ‘nauseating’, or ‘choking hazard’.

She settled for not finishing it at all, instead.

“I mean, I sure didn’t think you’d be the Samarian Sunset type, but… maybe something more straighforward?”

For a moment Jett considered if she should be flattered by that assesment, but she was distracted by how much she did want to grab the bottle with the highest alcohol concentration and hightail it out of here. Maybe sneak onto the observation deck and try to reacreate that night spent on Yorktown just after its completion, drunk enough they couldn’t tell whether it was the station’s architecture or their inebration that made them dizzy, forgetting that gravity was even a thing that existed. One night to forget everything in breathless giggles. She sighed. It would probably end a little differently tonight.

“Thanks, but no,” she eventually managed.

“Come on, Jett, this is a party!” Tilly admonished, in a tone she’d really hoped she didn’t have to hear. She had no no patience for that conversation right now. Across the table, she saw Culber tense, getting ready to tell Tilly off should she not be able to handle that herself, and in a moment of uncharacterisical awareness, Tilly conceded with a small “okay,” still holding the glass like a contagious science specimen.

“One glass of motor oil, coming up!” she cheered, and with that she was gone.

The table slowly fell into conversation again, with Jett doing her best to keep up, but her thoughts lingered elsewhere, including the piercing headache starting right behind her left eye, and the continuing crashed and roaring laughter coming from a table nearby, which had her fighting a flinch every time.

By the time Tilly returned, balancing three drinks between her hands and depositing them on the table, they were on the topic of tardigrades.

“You know, I really would love to meet Ripper again someday,” Tilly said, like that was a normal sentence, and moved the black drink across to her. “See if he’s happy.” 

Jett took it, and instinctively stirred it around with the straw. It was oddly satisfying, because its viscosity gave it a resistance and you could see the tracks the liquid formed around the straw.

Only this one didn’t.

Suspicions raised, she looked closer. The thing about it was that it’s unique chemical makeup made it highly susceptible to the slightest change. It made it impossible to be used in cocktails, or to be secretly spiked with anything. She had heard it turnes yellow if it came into contact with coffee.

Unfortunately though, it was very good at covering up smells, so Jett had two options to find out what was wrong with it. A) taste it, or B) wait to see if it would turn back into an inhomogenous mixture over time.

“Everything okay?” Tilly asked, having noticed her absence from the conversation. Jett only tapped the glass with the ring on her index a few times and yes, there was definitely a clear liquid collecting at the top. She smelled it again. No doubt.

“Where did you get this?”

“Um. The bar?” Tilly answered, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the makeshift bar at one end of the mess hall. “Is something wrong with it?”

“Who exactly?” Jett continued questioning.

“Tall, dark, and handsome over there.” She waved again. “I think his name is Jones? Something like that. Johnson? Operations guy.”

“And you ordered it plain?”

“Yeah,” Tilly said, starting to get irritated with being second-guessed. Jett only sighed and got up, taking the drink with her.

The guy noticed her before she had even made her way over to him, and by his expression he knew exactly what was coming. He turned around to snicker about her with his buddy next to him and she rolled her eyes, finally reaching earshot.

“Hey. Barboy,” she called. He bristled.

“That’s Ensign Jenkins to you.”

“Sure,” she ignored him, stepping up to him and waiting for him to notice the rank on her own uniform. But even though there was a flash of recognition, he was quick to cover it up with a sleazy smile.

“So what can I do for you, honey?”

She didn’t even acknowledge the bait and set her glass down on the table next to them with a heavy clink.

“Does that look right to you?”

He held her stare, didn’t even spare a glance at the drink as he deadpanned,

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t actually seen anyone drink that shit of their own free will.”

Then, he felt the need to continue, with some weird kind of innuendo in his voice, 

“Someone’s usually getting it forced down their throat.”

Jett didn’t hesistate.

Or rather, there was no thought process on her end before the guy suddenly found himself with a face full of black goo.

  
“That more like it?”

“Whoa, hey, babe, calm down, would you?” he yelled, frantically trying to get the stuff off his face, and only managing to stain his uniform in the process.

“Fucking disgusting.”

He growled and took a step towards her, but instad of taking one back, she only pushed one foot out, widening her stance and redistributing her weight, obviously throwing him off when it brought them close.

“Look,” he started, the lewd undertone finding its way back into his voice whil his hand found its way to her hip. “You ordered a shit drink, I was making it better. There’s no need to be a bitch about it, alright?”

Unimpressed, she only stared at him for a second, before very slowly warning,

“You better take that hand away or I’ll-”

  
“Or you’ll what?” he sneered, planting his hand more firmly and less apropriately.

She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She wasn’t usually one to throw hands, but. It was was already a bad day and this idiot was thankfully small emough that she could almost effortlessly crash her elbow right into his nose. He was operations, yes, so his last hand-to-hand combat lessons were probably more recent than hers, but he was also clearly drunk and she past giving a fuck.

She didn’t remember what happened next. It was all swift movements against slightly sluggish ones, training kicking in, glass breaking, objects falling, and yet she ended up with her head against the foot of a nearby table not long after.

At least the pain was filling her mind with something other than thoughts.

But it wasn’t long until it ebbed off and she was helped up by a worried Culber. She groaned as she sat, but waved him off.

  
“Think I might’ve broken his nose.”

It should have prompted him to move over to the other end of the fight, but he didn’t budge, instead calling over his shoulder for Stamets to call medbay. Right. Off duty.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Something certainly didn’t feel right in her left arm but that was nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, so she only gave a grunt in affirmation, which probably wasn’t very convincing.

“We need to stop having brawls in the mess hall or this ship is going to get a reputation,” Culber joked, and she let out a pained huff, but it made her look up. Behind him, there were still a few people watching the scene, but the general noise was on the rise again and since both parties seemed to be conscious, everyone returned to their own conversations. She sighed and heaved herself to her feet, Culber still right beside her.

“I’m going to insist you let me take you down to sickbay for a checkup,” he said after having watched her for a minute, and she was going to argue, but then she thought about the nice, cool quiet of sickbay, the fresh air and calm surroundings, took another look around, and suddenly decided sickbay didn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore. She patted his shoulder, and then left her hand there to lean against.

“Lead the way, Doc.”

**Author's Note:**

> fucking. respect. people. who. dont. drink. for. whatever. goddamn. reason.


End file.
